So then would robotic automation help improve this situation in the U.S., talmoortariq? If products could be made at a faster rate not by adding people but by adding better processes, it could potentially make the U.S. more competitive to places like China, no?

In terms of rate of productions, we can definitely hope the best from the robots. Because, otherwise we cannot match the production rate of the Asian countries. Just an example of Apple assembly line in China, It hires 230,000 employees. We cannot match that by just the human work force at all.

Elizabeth, surely the introduction of robots will make the labor cost drop to a large extent but its actually not the labor cost that is the problem. Its actually the rate of production of the products. A company would prefer China even if the labor cost is not low. Its because China provides a huge amount of work force that are dedicated towards the mass production of the products. Relatively, USA lags behind in terms of work force, because the people count is way low as compared to China.

Yes I agree, many robots come with the inbuilt feature of being prgrammed through teaching pendant(controller), its a pretty basic thing, because not everyone can program these robots and the coding is pretty complex as well. So I guess, it also must have a learning mode as well.

Really impressive, utilizing 3D mapping to obtain the co ordinates of the parts is a really effective technique. Specially the precision with which the robots are working and utilizing the adaptive control and co ordination of the robotic arms is really amazing. It appears that the industries that are presently automated by one armed robots might see a potential future in this advanced technology as well.

mrdon, Not sure about the programming tools used with the Robomotive. May need to get further into the development to see user tools. Unlikely that it will be similar to Baxter's approach, but many robots do teach positions as part of the programming effort.

Pretty impressive robot per the video. Just wondering how the operator would program the robot. With Baxter, it seems the robot programming is based recording the assembly process by moving the bot's arm to the respective work stage areas. Good article and video!

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